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The October 28 first-season finale of the Cinemax crime series "Quarry" will mark the end of what its creators and local collaborators describe as a particularly "authentic" Memphis drama. ("Authentic," however, is not a judgment often applied to the year's other Memphis-set series, Oprah Winfrey's "Greenleaf.")

Set in 1972 Memphis but filmed mostly in Louisiana, "Quarry" is the slow-burn psychological portrait of a long-haired and alienated ex-Marine sniper named Mac Conway (Logan Marshall-Green), who returns from Vietnam to an uncertain marriage and to a hometown transformed by resurgent racial tension, economic depression, anti-war sentiment and criminal conspiracy.

"Hollowed out on the inside" and "hard as a rock" (hence the code name "Quarry"), the desperate Mac is recruited as a reluctant hit man by a mysterious "broker" (Peter Mullan). Inevitably, this association leads to domestic tension, escalating chaos and metastatic violence, purveyed in part by a colorful supporting cast of distinctive and flamboyant Southern rogues, rednecks, drug dealers and psychopaths.

“There's no city with a richer history and more character to grow on than Memphis," said series co-creator, co-producer and co-writer Michael D. Fuller, explaining why he and fellow show runner and self-described "research junkie" Graham Gordy relocated author Max Collins' antihero — the star of 13 "Quarry" mystery novels dating back to 1976 — from Iowa. (Also, both Fuller and Gordy are Southerners, which possibly explains their attraction to what Fuller refers to as the "gritty 'Dukes of Hazzard'" vibe of "Quarry": Gordy grew up in Arkansas and remains based in Little Rock, while Fuller is a native of South Carolina.)

Fuller said he and Gordy — who previously collaborated on episodes of creator Ray McKinnon's acclaimed SundanceTV series, "Rectify" — wanted to make Mac Conway a true "native son" of a Memphis still smarting from the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Apparently suffering from unrecognized PTSD (in 1972, "post-traumatic stress disorder" wasn't even a diagnosis), Mac is the embodiment of a shell-shocked city.

Said Fuller: "We kind of made the connection between Mac as a character — who he was and what he'd been through — and Memphis as a community — the trauma that the city had endured and the trauma that Max had endured." Adding to the stress is another racial topic, as the controversy over the inauguration of court-ordered busing to achieve school desegregation becomes a major subplot. (A less intense plot point involves the disappearance of Mac's copy of the Otis Redding album "Otis Blue.")

With five days of shooting in Memphis in July 2015 (in addition to about 13 days spent here in 2013 on the original, later mostly discarded pilot), "Quarry" stages sequences on South Main; near the Joe's Wines & Liquor "Sputnik" sign in Midtown; and in Tom Lee Park (where a character notes the memorial inscription's reference to the heroic Lee as "a Very Worthy Negro"), among other locations.

This is the office of the Memphis Press-Scimitar, circa 1972, as imagined in "Quarry." Jodi Balfour (center) plays a rock-music reporter.(Photo: HBO/Cinemax)

Memphis detail informs both the story and the visuals. Mac's wife, Joni (Jodi Balfour), is a rock critic for the old evening daily newspaper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar, and the show implies she wrote the first profile of the now famed power-pop group Big Star ("Big Star Solidifies Place as Memphis' Best New Band" is the headline). Eagle-eyed viewers may note such props as tickets stubs for an Emerson, Lake & Palmer show at the Auditorium and a pro wrestling bout at the Mid-South Coliseum. One scene takes place in a now fondly remembered record store, Poplar Tunes (the set in this case is more atmospheric than authentic). Best of all, the Downtown skyline includes a striking digital effect: The unfinished Hernando de Soto Bridge, still under construction and stretching like a half-assembled dinosaur skeleton across the Mississippi.

"The research so far has been meticulous," said Memphis Film Commissioner Linn Sitler. "They really have tried to capture Memphis much more than any of these other projects that have been based elsewhere."

"They wanted to be as accurate as 'Mad Men,'" said Wayne Dowdy, historian and senior manager for the Memphis Public Library and Information Center. "They were very specific in their requests. They wanted scanned copies of both the cover and the back cover of the 1972 phone book. They got into a lot of detail about where certain nightclubs were located in the city.

"This was many months before they came to shoot here," Dowdy said. "We got to the point where they were emailing or calling us on a daily basis. And it was wonderful for us. Usually when we see Memphis portrayed in films, we gnash our teeth and say, 'If they had asked us, we could've set 'em straight.'" (Not that occasional mistakes don't occur: The presence of Dixie beer — hardly seen in Memphis in the 1970s — is a tip-off that the show is shot in New Orleans.)

Said Gordy: "Good writing is about a lot of things in terms of characters and structure, but it's also about specificity." ("You hungry?" a police detective asks, in one scene. "I could go for a Huey Burger.")

In contrast, this year's other Memphis-set drama, the Oprah Winfrey Network's "Greenleaf" — a primetime soap centered on a 4,000-member African-American megachurch and a family that lives in a huge lakeside suburban mansion — has paid little more than lip service to the characters' supposed hometown. (In one episode, the pastor played by David Keith reports that his new secretary "used to date the center for the Memphis Grizzlies.") Filming in Atlanta, the producers have made no attempt to shoot here (beyond a few establishing shots) and have made no contact with Memphis-based researchers or the Memphis film office.

The program's most Memphicentric element may be the character of Mavis McCready, played by Oprah Winfrey (and possibly named in homage to Mavis Staples, who appears on the show's soudtrack). Mavis — whose big hair and costume jewelry suggest Wanda Wilson, the late operator of the P&H Cafe — is the proprietor of "Auntie M's House of Jazz and Blues," an establishment dedicated to "purveying the devil's music down on Beale Street," according to one sanctified character.

Whatever the relative authenticity of "Quarry" and "Greenleaf," it's certainly remarkable that two current and highly publicized television dramas take place in Memphis. This isn't the first time for such a coincidence, however.

From mid-2010 to mid-2011, TNT broadcast 20 episodes of "Memphis Beat," which starred Jason Lee as a police detective, Elvis fan and rock-and-blues singer who styled himself as "the keeper of Memphis." The show was produced in Louisiana, but it did include secondary footage — so-called "B roll" — shot in Memphis, along with garnishes of Memphis-specific factoids in the dialogue.

Meanwhile, The CW aired 22 episodes of "Hellcats," a self-anointed "cheerleading drama" set at fictional Lancer University in Memphis. The program was even less Memphis-authentic than "Memphis Beat": It was shot in Vancouver.

Of course, the reason some of these projects were based outside of Memphis — and the reason "The Blind Side," Craig Brewer's "Footloose" remake and other Mid-South stories located farther South — is due to the extremely generous spending rebates for filmmaking offered by Georgia and Louisiana. (In comparison, the recent "Million Dollar Quartet" was able to shoot here this year because of new Tennessee incentives and money from the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau).

In 2013, much of the "Quarry" pilot was shot in Memphis and North Mississippi, with John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") as director. The cast included Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Joni and Stellan Skarsgaard as "the broker." By the time Cinemax — a Time-Warner pay cable network owned by HBO — decided to move forward with a "Quarry" series almost two years later, Hillcoat, Winstead and Skarsgaard had moved on. Greg Yaitanes — whose credits include the Cinemax series "Banshee" and the ABC cult program "Lost" — helmed the pilot re-shoot (episode one) and the subsequent seven first-season episodes. Yaitanes' dedication to the project was evident to his social media followers: For months, he has paid homage to the program's Memphis atmosphere by calling attention to the photographs of William Eggleston, the music of Stax Records and other major influences. In addition, Memphis musician David Porter and former Elvis associate Jerry Schilling were enlisted as consultants, and such local artists as Stax legend William Bell (performing "Born Under a Bad Sign") and Keia Johnson (covering "B-A-B-Y" at Royal Studios) participated.

Said Fuller: "We fought like hell to get the show in Memphis full time. That's what we wanted, because there's a texture there that's hard to recreate. But that decision was based in altitudes way above our heads. When we failed at that we tried for Mississippi, just to be across the border, and then Arkansas, to be close. Now, we're in Lousiana."

In any case, the attention to detail has paid off, at least with most critics. The Hollywood Reporter described "Quarry" as "a meaty crime drama with historical heft and Memphis-based thematic depth," while the Village Voice praised the program's "panoramic look at the turbulent South in the early Seventies."

Fuller describes the first season of "Quarry" (which debuted Sept. 9) as a "creation story" for the lead character, whose origin is mysterious in the novels. If Cinemax gives producers a go-ahead for a second season, the series — even if based in Lousiana — will continue to probe what Gordy calls the "deep tissue" of Memphis and the Mid-South.

Said Gordy: "Growing up on Mid-South wrestling, watching all those Memphis wrestlers when Little Rock was part of the circuit, I'd love to get that into the story somehow. Backroom gambling, the 'Dixie Mafia,' bootlegging, gun-running — there's so much to work with. We're obviously hopeful that we get to keep telling the story."